A total eclipse of the sun unfolded across a narrow strip of Indonesia encompassing 40 million people last week, while a partial eclipse was seen in a wider swath of Asia and northern Australia.

China”s top economic planner, meanwhile, said at a press conference on the sidelines of the National People”s Congress that it was impossible that the world”s second-largest economy would have a hard landing. Outside the Great Hall of the People, uniformed hostesses serving the delegates jumped as they posed for photographs on Tiananmen Square.

In other images from the region last week, a Tibetan exile shouted slogans outside the Chinese embassy in New Delhi on the 57th anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day.

Japan marked the fifth anniversary of the 2011 “triple disaster”  quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis  even as the massive tasks of radiation clean-up and reconstruction continue.

A Hindu devotee offered prayers at the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers on occasion of Mahashivratri festival in Allahabad, India, and a Hindu holy man in Nepal smoked marijuana.

In Myanmar, a longtime confidante of Aung San Suu Kyi, Htin Kyaw, was confirmed in a parliamentary vote as one of the three final candidates to be the next president, albeit as a proxy for the Nobel laureate.